Stretchy or flexible fastener tabs and fastenings that carry hook and loop closures are desirable, for instance, as parts of infant and adult diapers, surgical gowns, and other garments and wraps. Fastener tabs typically comprise sheet, film or nonwoven web that have embossing or other surface patterns for grasping by the user. To the back of such material, a tape segment of fastener elements is secured, forming a laminate structure. The fastener tape is typically made of a synthetic resin that is not stretchable, and the resulting laminate, in the region of the tape segment, typically is relatively stiff, does not stretch or flex as desired, or does not present the desired degree of cloth-like feel.
It is desirable that the substance of the tab and the associated fastener tape provide an integral component that achieves desired qualities, such as elasticity, flexibility and cloth-like feel. The invention relates to filling such needs with novel fastenings, and to machines and methods of manufacture that enable manufacture of such fastenings, as well as other desirable products.
This invention also relates to composite hook and loop fastenings, straps, ties or wrappings, which include both hook and loop regions and to methods of their manufacture, constituents of such composites, and products employ such fastenings.
A typical composite hook and loop fastener that has been commercially successful is produced by overlapping and attaching pre-formed hook material and pre-formed loop material and overlapping and attaching the two materials together along their edge margins or by totally overlapping one over the other. The attaching has been done by ultrasonic welding, thermal fusing and adhesive bonding, steps which add to the cost of the manufacturing process. Composite hook and loop materials formed by in situ lamination uniformly across an extensive surface of a pre-formed loop web during forming the hook component have also had advantageous uses but have had limitations in other circumstances. Other proposals have involved impregnating a web so that resin of the formed hooks lies on both the hook side and the opposite side of a second material, or have required special materials that are costly or difficult to manufacture, such as separately formed woven and knit loop materials, or have presented other disadvantages, such as difficulty in manufacture and in achieving the optimal balance of desired properties such as hook and loop engageability, stretchiness, flexibility, feel, uniformity and cost.
The following references represent prior proposals directed, in one way or another, to aspects of some of the problems addressed here or to materials useful in stretchable, flexible or composite fastening products. While perhaps effective in some respects, in other respects they have not fully met needs met by the present invention. We refer to U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,058,853; 4,247,967; 4,654,246; 4,672,722; 5,133,112; 5,172,980; 5,318,555; 5,669,120; 6,080,347; and 6,106,922; and to EPO No. 826,354 and WO No. 99/176 31. These references describe applications of stretchy fastening or stretchy loop material, define the ranges of elongation and strength in which elastically stretchable fastening is needed and describe elastic carrier materials that can be useful. Accordingly their full disclosures are incorporated herein by reference.